


To Say Nothing Of The Dragon

by Pen37



Series: To Say Nothing Of The Dragon [1]
Category: Brave - Fandom, How to Train Your Dragon - Fandom, crossover - Fandom
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Merguffin, Mericcup, Merida drags the young lords into and out of shenanigans, Merida prods Supernatural buttock, Mystery, No couples in this story, There could be a couple at the end if you bend over backwards and squint, What happened to Hiccup?, Young Macintosh is too pretty for his own good, astrid knows things, but who could it be?, character as seen through the eyes of others, humor and pathos, medieval noir, merida May be the ancestor to Sam and dean Winchester, princess Merida: Supernatural detective, there are no Winchesters in this story, wee Dingwall goes off like a claymore mine, young Macguffin has a good head on his shoulders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 08:36:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16281206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pen37/pseuds/Pen37
Summary: Magic leaves a mark.  Once you’re touched by it, there is no going back.Princess Merida wasn’t just touched by magic, she was slapped out of a fairy tree and hit every sidhe branch face-first on the way down.Now she solves supernatural problems for others who can’t.But when a Viking Chieftan asks her to find his son, who he thinks was taken by a dragon, she may have taken on more than she and the young lords can handle.





	To Say Nothing Of The Dragon

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Expertise?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1100828) by [lalaietha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/lalaietha). 



> My kids have lately watched How To Train Your Dragon and Brave. While watching with them, I noticed how similar both Hiccup and Merida are. Then I read “Expertise?” On AO3, and this idea popped into my head.
> 
> While doing research for the story, I’ve come to see that apparently shipping Hiccup and Merida is a thing that happened quite a bit after Brave came out. 
> 
> Interesting Idea, considering that a big part of Merida’s character arc involves her not wanting marriage, and Hiccup was canonically arse over teakettle for Astrid. That being said, In the right story I could see it. 
> 
> But this is not that story. There is no shipping at all in this (there is quite a bit of boating, however). It’s meant to be a bit noir-Ish. A bit supernatural. And a bit of a character study.

Magic leaves a mark. Once you’re touched by it, there is no going back.

Once upon a time, there was a princess thusly touched by magic.

Some say she was very good at solving problems that no one else could solve. Some say she traveled the world helping others who could not help themselves.

This is not her story. But to know the story, you must know her.

—

Merida DunBroch wasn’t just touched by magic. Magic slapped her out of a fairie tree and she hit every sidhe branch face-first on the way down.

At first, the mark wasn’t visible. It was in little things. Mum lost her silver embroidery needle, Merida could find it in a haystack. It only escalated from there. To ejecting a clurichan from the kitchens after all the beer in the castle suddenly vanished on Hogmanay.

From there it was rescuing lost sheep for local farmers after what turned out to be a pooka took them.

By the time she rescued a kelpie from Wee Dingwall’s teeth, word of her deeds traveled as far the Southern Isles, Corona and Arendale. She knew this, because a trader from Limerick asked “The Bear Princess Of DunBroch” to come convince a banshee to move on and stop haunting his family.

Merida thought it was all a bit daft. But her mother, with her keen mind for human nature, thought differently.

“Your royal station gives you a unique position.” Elinor told her. “People trust you above all others to take the right action and speak the hard truths that need to be said.”

“You mean she can stomp around wrecking things and no one will burn her at the stake without risking a war,” Da’ said.

Mum just folded her hands. “Perhaps before you go, we should study a bit of diplomacy.”

—

Life continued this way. Help repair a wagon for a dullahan. Get those humans to return that leprechaun’s pot of gold. Are you sure my baby isn’t a changeling? (And how do you diplomatically tell a mother that her baby isn’t a troll, it’s just ugly?)

Until one day, she received an odd request (even for her). Stoick the Vast, chieftain of the Hairy Hooligan Vikings of Berk thought that perhaps his son was kidnapped by a dragon. Would the Bear Princess please help get him back?

“What do I know about Vikings?” Merida was dubious.

“Given their history of invading, best not to anger them,” Mum looked troubled.

So Merida packed her things and set out for Berk.

—

As her men pulled the birlinn next to the Viking longships, Merida looked over Berk with a dispassionate eye. A cluster of A-framed longhouses sheltered on the lee of a rocky hillside, reminding her of the seabird nests on the cliffs back home. A large hall, built into a cave, rose in the center like a mother hen guarding her chicks. From his descriptions, she could pick out Ambassador Gobber’s smithy.

“The Viking said they have two months of summer,” Young Macintosh said. “How did they carve those in that kind of time?” He pointed to the giant stone Viking sentries guarding the entrance to the port. “Especially if it’s hailing sideways all summer long.” He pulled his sheepskin cloak around himself, shivering.

Merida briefly gazed at the statues before turning her attention to the village again. The buildings all seemed grim and gray, yet hearty. Not unlike the Vikings she’s met so far. “I assume they built them over time. With lots of stubbornness.”

A splash at the back of the boat drew their attention. They turned to see Young MacGuffin pulling Wee Dingwall into the craft with a fishing net. Wee Dingwall appeared not to have noticed that he’d fallen into the ocean, nor the wee shark chewing on his boot.

With a sigh, Merida drew the lords together. “These Vikings seem like bluff sort of lads. We’re guests here, so watch your step around them, if ye ken my meaning.” She was mostly speaking to Young MacGuffin. Of the three, he had the calmest head. She could trust him to keep Wee Dingwall from wandering off, and Young MacIntosh from giving offense out of pride and arrogance.

And thanks to his quiet, unassuming nature, people tended to forget about him. He’d picked up quite a few tidbits of useful information and then passed them along to her that way.

“Teach granny to suck eggs, Princess.” MacGuffin said with a gentle smile. “Da’ already told me the same thing.”

Merida put her hands up in a peace offering. “Alright. Then maybe find a cloak for Wee Dingwall. His lips are turning blue.”

Her men docked the boat, and Merida leaped over the side. Gobber and a man who reminded her a bit of her own father, only larger, were standing together and talking. A blonde girl and a dark haired boy stood off behind him.

“Princess Merida,” Gobber said. “This is Chieftan Stoick Haddock of the Hairy Hooligan Tribe.”

Chieftan Haddock took her hand in his. “You may call me Stoick the Vast.” He said. “This is my nephew Snotlout Jorgenson and his wife, Astrid Hofferson.” He waved the two over. “They’ll assist you in any way they can.”

Merida introduced the young lords.

“You must be tired after your long journey,” Chief Haddock said. “We’ve prepared the guest hall for you and your vassals to stay in. Astrid will show you the way. We’ll have dinner soon in the great hall. Tomorrow, you can start finding my son.”

There was a sadness in his eyes at the mention of his son that shattered Merida’s heart.

“I’ll do my best, Chief Haddock. But there may be nothing I can do.” Merida said softly. She wanted to prepare the big man for the worst case scenario. Behind them, Astrid Hoefferson shifted uncomfortably.

“I understand,” the great man lowered his head.

—  
That night after dinner, she sat by the fire with the young lords.

“Astrid Hoefferson knows something.” She said.

Young MacGuffin nodded thoughtfully. “She wouldn’t look your way through dinner.” He said. “Are you going to ask her what she knows?”

“Eventually.” Merida placed another log onto the fire. “First I need to know what questions to ask. What are your impressions of the people?”

“Relief that Young Haddock is gone?” Young MacGuffin made a face, like he was tasting the words to see if they suited what he wanted to say. “And guilt that they’re relieved. Especially since their Chieftain is sad.”

Merida nodded encouragingly at him.

“Snotlout Jorgenson thought that Young Haddock was useless.” Macintosh said. “I overheard him telling the blonde twins. Young Haddock was said to be too scrawny, too clumsy and too weak to pull his own weight.”

“I have the feeling that not pulling your own weight around here has Consequences.” Merida winced. In this cold, inhospitable land, anyone who couldn't fit in was a burden on the rest. How long had the community resented the chief’s son for not shouldering the burden they needed him to shoulder?

Without the community’s respect, he couldn’t have been expected to take over as the next chief, could he?

What if someone in Berk wanted to ensure that he didn’t become the next chief?

To what end? The good of the tribe? Personal gain?

That put a sinister cast on things.

Snotlout was now the next in line to be Chieftan, but Merida got the feeling that his wife Astrid was actually the one who ran things - not unlike Merida’s own parents.

Young MacGuffin watched her as these thoughts played out to their inevitable conclusion. “Take Wee Dingwall with you when you go out,” he said. “Just in case you run into trouble. No one expects a Dingwall in battle.”

Merida nodded in agreement.  
—

Merida watched Gobber hammer out a sword on his anvil. She was familiar with the smithy from back home. Though in DunBroch, the smith made horseshoes far more often than Claymores. (Seeing all the pointy things in the smithy, she sent Wee Dingwall out to the sheep pens with Young Macintosh as a minder.)

“I knew Hiccup better than anyone else, other than Stoick,” Gobber said. “He was my apprentice.”

“How?” Merida blurted out. Gobber looked up at her with a sharp frown. Merida felt a hot blush spread across her face. “Forgive me. But you told me that Young Haddock was . . . Er . . . Slight in size.”

“Aye, a right fishbone,” Gobber smiled in fond remembrance. “But sharp as a sword, that one. Always tinkering. He devised all kinds of gadgets when he couldn’t muscle his way through the work.” He pointed to various ropes and pulleys around the room. Merida studied them with keen interest. Here was a new side of Young Haddock.

“When his gadgets threatened to take over the forge, I gave him his own space.” He pointed to a curtained off area in the back.

Merida reached for the curtain, but paused. “May I?”

Gobber waved her in. “No one’s been In there since Stoick after Hiccup vanished.”

A thick blanket of dust coated the workshop. Merida could make out charcoal drawings on one wall. Plans for a complicated siege engine, if she had to guess. Here and there on shelves were tools. A drawing table held scraps of velum, drawn, scraped clean and redrawn on until they were so thin they were almost translucent.

It appeared that Young Haddock was an artist as well as inventor. Also? Stoick or Gobber or both must have cared for the boy a great deal to supply him with such drawing materials.

She knelt on the dusty floor to peer under the furniture. There, against the wall behind the drawing desk, lay another sheepskin page.

She took up the page and examined it. It looked to be a drawing of some kind of wyrm in flight, wings and fins outstretched almost perfectly symmetrical, save that someone had smudged away part of the tail.

Merida carried the page out the door, and held it up into the sun. There were heavy indentations in the velum from whatever Young Haddock had been drawing on the page on top of this one. She traced them with her fingers. They seemed to be a larger sketch of the smudged out part of the tail.

As she turned to go back to the smithy, she spotted Astrid Hoefferson across the way, watching her with an unreadable expression.

“Gobber,” Merida asked as she returned to the forge. “Why does Chief Haddock think his son was kidnapped by a dragon?”

Gobber put the red-hot sword he was working on into a bucket of cold water to cool it. He wiped his brow and took a drink of watered-down mead. “I suppose it started with the last dragon attack.”

The Vikings, like Merida’s own people, have a tradition of storytelling. And Gobber made a fine bard. Without Merida noticing it, the sunbeams slanted lower and the shadows grew long as he spun a tale.

She hung on every word from Young Haddock’s claim that he killed a Night Fury, to his prowess in dragon fighting. It was almost dark by the time Gobber finished his story with the boy being selected to kill a dragon, and then vanishing in the night. “And after Hiccup vanished, the dragon raids also stopped.” Gobber concluded.

As if on cue, Merida’s stomach growled.

“Sounds like time to close up for the night.” Gobber noted.

Merida thanked him for the story. She kept the drawing, retrieved Young Macintosh and Wee Dingwall from where he still stood in the sheep pens, staring vacantly into the middle-distance.

Young Macintosh looked to have collected his usual hangers on. Young, female and  
brainless. Merida bit back a smile as she watched them encircle him. These girls were a bit hardier than the highland lasses who normally trailed him everywhere he went. He would have to be careful not to break any hearts here. Otherwise these girls might snap him in half like a dry stick.

She felt like the leader of a bizarre parade as everyone followed her into the mead hall.

“Productive day?” Chief Stoick sounded hopeful.

“Too soon to tell.” Merida thought it had been. But she didn’t want to get the chief’s hopes up. “I wondered if I could look over your son’s room after dinner.”

“I’ll take you myself.”

—

The house, like all the other houses in Berk, looked like an overturned boat. This one had crisscrossing dragons arching over the doorway. Why would a people so besieged by dragons adopt them as a totem?

Then again, her family put bears on everything they owned. She didn’t have room to criticize.

The inside of the Haddock home seemed comfortable, if a bit dark and lonely. Stoick pointed to the loft in the back, indicating it to be his son’s room. Then he turned his attention to building a fire.

Young Haddock’s room bore the same signs as his workshop: sketches pinned against a wall. Half-finished inventions on the desk. A thick layer of dust on everything.

Merida ran a finger through the dust. Young Haddock had been born a scant year before her own birth. By her reckoning, his disappearance occurred two years before she’d turned her mother into a bear. Which meant he would have been . . . Fifteen or Sixteen at the time. At sixteen, when she’d wanted to hide things from Mum and Da’ she’d put them . . .

Merida crawled under the platform bed, heedles of the dust bunnies twisting their way into her wild red locks. There, wedged between the back corner and the wall, was a bound book.

Merida pried it out. Once she was out from the bed, seated on the floor, she opened it. It looked like a manual on Dragons. At least, it would if she could read it.

Merida scowled at the angular letters. She’d felt so proud to learn to speak Norse both quickly and fluently in preparation for this trip. Maybe she should have spent a little time learning to read it as well.

Still, it looked like someone had corrected the manual. Bits were crossed out, and more bits were written in the margins.

With a sigh, she put the book aside to examine the rest of the room. Young Haddock claimed to have shot down a Night Fury, which Gobber assured her is the most dangerous of all dragons. Then suddenly he blossomed into this dragon-killing prodigy.

Except.

He never killed a dragon, did he? Gobber said he’d never seen the like. Hiccup subdued the creatures with bits of grass and flashes of light.

But when he was actually called on to kill one, the one thing he’d worked so hard for, he vanished.

Merida stared at the drawing of the wyrm from the shop. Where did Young Haddock claim to have shot down the Night Fury?

—

Merida set off at first light with provisions and a map of the island provided for her by Fishlegs Ingerman. She’d been hiking for a mile when she became aware of her follower.

The princess congratulated herself for being right with a grim smile.

When she reached the wooded slopes of Raven Point, she slipped into the shadows, and waited.

Before long, Astrid Hoefferson smashed her way through the underbrush.

Merida could tell that Astrid would absolutely take her in a fair fight. Though Merida had trained to fight at her Da’s knee, she’d been somewhat hampered in that she had to balance her lessons in war with lessons in diplomacy and more ladylike arts.

Astrid hadn’t been similarly hampered. She was a warrior, born and bred.

But Merida didn’t plan to make it a fair fight. Instead she waited for the other girl to blunder into her snare trap. The trap ensnared Astrid’s ankle, pulling her upside down and making her drop her sinister war axe.

Astrid reached for the knife at her belt.

“I wouldn’t.” Merida said, emerging from the underbrush, arrow loosely nocked. “Hands where I can see them.”

The two girls stared at one another, each waiting for the other to say the first word.

Finally, Merida spoke. “You’ve been following me. Why?”

“I wanted to make sure you’re safe, Princess,” Astrid crossed her arms. “Wouldn’t do for royalty to get hurt while visiting.”

“Let’s try a different question.” Merida said. “Where did Hiccup’s Night Fury go down? Gobber said he claimed to have shot it down somewhere off Raven Point.”

Astrid’s eyes widened. ‘Gotcha,’ Merida thought.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Alright then,” Merida said. “I suppose I’ll find it on my own.”

“Wait!” Astrid called after her as Merida turned to leave. The young warrior looked conflicted. Merida waited patiently while Astrid held an argument with herself. Finally she met the princess’s eyes. “I’ll show you!”

Merida nodded. “I want the whole story. Everything you know.” She had a feeling that Astrid had been debating whether or not to tell anyone what she knew since the day Young Haddock disappeared. Whatever she knew was eating her up.

She cut Astrid down, and helped her retrieve her weapons. Then the Viking girl led her to a bowl up within the mountain with a glacier lake inside.

As they sat there, Astrid told her the story of Young Haddock, his friend Toothless, and the giant dragon colony with it’s drones and queen. As she relayed the story, Astrid stood and paced.

“Hiccup told me that he couldn’t kill a dragon, but that he was going to explain everything to his dad the next day. Instead, the next day he and Toothless were gone. I thought he’d just run away.”

She sat next to Merida, head in her hands. “I was so mad. I thought he was a coward. Then the raids stopped. I’ve had years to wonder what happened. Now I think maybe he and his dragon somehow stopped that monster. But maybe . . . He would have come back if he could . . . Wouldn’t he?”

Merida wasn’t so sure. She understood what it was like to feel as if you didn’t measure up to expectations. She’d been desperate enough to follow the will o’ wisps even knowing that they could lead her off into the woods where she’d be lost forever. How desperate was Young Haddock?

She patted Astrid’s shoulder. “Were the two of you close?”

“Odin, no!” Astrid laughed. “I was only just starting to respect him. But given time . . .”

Merida nodded in understanding. Given time, anything could have happened. Given enough time, she might even learn to love one of the young lords. Assuming she didn’t decide to follow the magic calling that lay before her and pass the throne to one of the triplets instead.

But that was all in the future. Today there was only the memory of Young Haddock. And, alive or dead, it’s a memory that should be honored.

She stood, brushing off her skirts and extended a hand to Astrid. “Chieftan Stoick deserves to know,” she said.

Astrid took her hand, and the two women walked back to Berk.

—

When the entire story came out, Stoick the Vast looked sick and gray. He withdrew wordlessly into his home.

Merida followed.

She found him in his son’s loft room, reading the edited dragon-hunting book.

“I drove him away,” Stoick’s voice hung heavy with regret.

“A relationship takes two people,” Merida said. “Hiccup could have tried to explain.”

“I wouldn’t have listened,” he chuckled bitterly.

“You don’t know that he was running away,” Merida said. “It sounds like he was running into a fight. Maybe he survived. And maybe he’s afraid to come back. Sometimes, we don’t see just how much we’re loved.”

“I don’t know if your son is alive or not,” she said. “But if in my travels our paths do cross, I’ll tell him that you’d very much like to mend your own torn bonds. Maybe you’ll yet get the chance to make things right.”

Stoick took her hand again, like he did the morning of her arrival at the dock. “Thank you.”

There really wasn’t more to say. Merida left the Chieftan sitting quietly in his son’s room.

—

Merida and the lords sailed away with the next tide.

They weren’t alone. A fleet of Viking longships sailed North, the opposite direction from the Scotsmen. Chief Stoick, looking for the island Astrid Hoefferson described. Looking for signs of his son.

The DunBroch ship had sailed for three hours when a great black creature dropped on them from the sky, shaking the whole craft with it’s landing.

The sailors and young lords leaped to action, brandishing deck hooks and rigging knives, oars and whatever improvised weapons they could find. (In Wee Dingwall’s case, biting the ship’s hull savagely).

Merida had been sitting on some rigging eating an apple. Recognizing the beast from the drawing in Young Haddock’s workshop, She grabbed up another apple from her pack and calmly strolled through the armed morass and up to the dragon.

“Apple?”

The creature looked cross-eyed at her outstretched hand.

“No, thank you.” From the creature’s back, a person in odd black armor leaned forward. He removed his helm, shaking out shaggy hair. “He eats fish.”

Merida shrugged. So this polite dragon rider was Young Haddock. He didn’t look anything like Stoick. He was quite a braw lad, actually. “I don’t have fish. Just an apple.”

Seeing the princess’s lack of concern, the sailors relaxed, going back to their work. Young MacGuffin pried Wee Dingwall from the ship’s boat.

No one payed the dragon, rider and Princess anymore mind. After all, It wasn’t the strangest thing that’s happened in Merida’s presence.

Young Haddock seemed unnerved by the sailors going about their business. He blinked at them as they ignored the great black dragon on the prow of their ship. “Er. . . Right. Are you the Bear Princess?” Young Haddock shook his head, as if forcing himself away from distraction.

Merida looked from the ship’s sail, painted brightly with the DunBroch clan symbol, to the bear carving that decorated the ship’s prow. Then to her DunBroch tartan. “What was your first clue?”

Merida’s unflappability also seemed to contribute to Young Haddock’s sense of confusion. “You . . . I . . . I saw your ship coming from Berk. I’d heard stories of you. And I wondered what your business there was? Is everything alright there?”

Merida smiled at that. If Young Haddock still payed heed to the comings and goings of Berk, perhaps there was hope for reconciliation between himself and Stoick. “Things In Berk are going to work out just fine, I think. Do you mind if I tell you a story?”

Young Haddock scratched the back of his head. “What kind of story?”

“It’s about a lot of things actually. How it takes courage to change your fate. But also how I ended up buying a castle’s worth of carvings from a witch, and turned me Mum into a bear and how she saved me life by fighting another great demon bear. And how we set everything to rights. Except for the wood carvings. We still had to buy them. But mostly it’s how me whole family realized that we love each other, even if we don’t always know how to say it.”

Young Haddock slid from the back of his beastie into a graceless pile next to her. He took the proffered apple and bit into it. “I don’t think I’m in any danger of buying a castle’s worth of wood carvings from a witch,” he said sardonically around his mouthful of apple. “The rest is a whole lot to unpack. Maybe start with the part where you turned your mom into a bear?”

—

Once upon a time, there was a princess who was very good at solving problems that no one else could solve. Some say she traveled the world helping others who could not help themselves.

They say that when she ceased her wanderings, she became a queen and ruled wisely and justly with the help of a loyal husband. Others say that she passed her crown to a brother and continued to wander, helping anyone in need.

But still others say she took a home in a stone cottage overlooking the sea. That if you looked closely on dark nights, when the moon was just right, you could see the shape of a great black dragon flying to and fro in the skies above her home, playing in the curling smoke above her chimney.

Did the dragon belong to her? To a friend? A lover? Or was it a figment of the minstrel’s imagination?

The complete story is lost to time. All we have are fragments. May it be up to you to decide.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: Pixar based DunBroch on Glencoe, Scotland, while Cressida Cowell based Berk on a tiny little island in the Hebrides that she spent summers on. So Merida and Hiccup are practically neighbors. 
> 
> That’s probably why all the adults in How To Train Your Dragon speak with a Scottish accent. They were actual Norse-Gaels. No clue why the kids don’t have the accent. 
> 
> You can see the Norse influence in the Norse-Gael culture in Brave. Partially in the Gaelic ships, which bear a resemblance to Viking Longships. (Also, I can’t find the reference anymore. But I remember reading somwhere that the production team in Brave toyed with the idea of hinting that Fergus might have had a Viking background before settling down to become lord of DunBroch and eventually high king of Scotland).


End file.
